THthunderbong·Jan 26, 2025Submission
4 points · Open discussionruby
irb
Ruby2020–2025
ruby / irb
irb
interactive Ruby
6Distinct people
7Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
477GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
interactive Ruby
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
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Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 11:56:56 AM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year7 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2020-09-10 22:40:27 UTC to 2025-01-26 11:28:57 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
What Hacker News says
7 sourcesAutocompletion is getting much improved.
In the latest version of IRB for example they can use RBS based static typing for autocompletion[1].
This gives me a lot of hope that we'll have a more widely used static typing solution soon. i.e. some coming together of Sorbet, Steep and RBS.
1. https://github.com/ruby/irb?tab=readme-ov-file#type-based-co...
In Autotuner: How to speed up your Rails appI think one of the most interesting things to happen to IRB is the recent introduction of static type completion[1].
The fact that this is a nice, mainstream, usage of RBS types in the standard library gives me hope that RBS or some kind of inline[2] version of it will become much more common in future.
1. https://github.com/ruby/irb?tab=readme-ov-file#type-based-co...
2. The new Prism parser makes it much easier to extract an execute comments so I would be surprised if no one has thought of using that to annotate code with RBS types.
In Interactive Ruby (IRB) (2023)> debugger
Check out the latest IRB on 3.3, it finally gives Pry a run for its money, especially when jumping into the debugger!
https://github.com/ruby/irb#debugging-with-irb
$ ruby test.rb
From: test.rb @ line 7 :
1: def foo
2: 10.times do |i|
3: p i
4: end
5: end
6:
=> 7: binding.irb
8:
9: foo
irb(main):001> break 9
(rdbg:irb) break 9
#0 BP - Line /Users/loic.nageleisen/test.rb:9 (line)
irb:rdbg(main):002> break 3
#1 BP - Line /Users/loic.nageleisen/test.rb:3 (line)
irb:rdbg(main):003> continue
[4, 9] in test.rb
4| end
5| end
6|
7| binding.irb
8|
=> 9| foo
=>#0 <main> at test.rb:9
Stop by #0 BP - Line /Users/loic.nageleisen/test.rb:9 (
Read the rest
line)
irb:rdbg(main):004> continue
[1, 9] in test.rb
1| def foo
2| 10.times do |i|
=> 3| p i
4| end
5| end
6|
7| binding.irb
8|
9| foo
=>#0 block {|i=0|} in foo at test.rb:3
#1 Integer#times at <internal:numeric>:237
# and 2 frames (use `bt' command for all frames)
Stop by #1 BP - Line /Users/loic.nageleisen/test.rb:3 (line)
irb:rdbg(main):005> bt
=>#0 block {|i=0|} in foo at test.rb:3
#1 Integer#times at <internal:numeric>:237
#2 Object#foo at test.rb:2
#3 <main> at test.rb:9
irb:rdbg(main):006>
See also the debug gem by itself:
- https://github.com/ruby/debug#debug-command-on-the-debug-con...
- https://github.com/ruby/debug#remote-debugging
- https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=KoichiSa...
Ruby's IRB has always been nice to work with: https://github.com/ruby/irb#commands
Of course LISP is the example to look at with REPL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Read%E2%80%93eval%E2%80%93prin...
...esp with Emacs: https://slime.common-lisp.dev/
In Ask HN: What are some well-designed REPLs?Starting in ruby 2.6, irb is a gem bundled with ruby, so you can upgrade to the latest version in older rubies: https://github.com/ruby/irb#installation
In IRB's Built-In Measure (2021)`_` being assigned the result of the last statement evaluated is an IRB feature [1], not a ruby feature - hence the note that it is not a universal solution.
[1]: https://github.com/ruby/irb/blob/master/lib/irb/context.rb#L...
In Ruby adds experimental support for rightward assignments